07 June 2011

Since Apple has replaced Microsoft as the leading patent-wielding cheerleader for closed-source computing, it will come as no surprise that I have no intention of providing a rapturous run-down of yesterday's wondrous announcements. But there is one aspect I'd like to explore, because it has interesting wider implications.

2 comments:

Why do you call this service new and innovative when MP3.com did it more than a decade ago? The music companies sued them and also sued the investors.

No one should use a server owned by a viscous company like Apple because everyone can run their own cloud. OpenSSH server which includes sftp, a secure replacement for ftp file sharing, is part of every major gnu/linux distribution and requires little or no configuration. Rsync makes things even easier and offers full, encrypted file sync between any two computers or devices. Grsync is a graphical front end for rsync and sftp is a recognized protocol of the Konqueror web and file browser. Everyone should be using this wonderful free software.

@twitter: you're right that MP3.com had the idea of a music locker long ago, but the "innovation" I was referring to was getting the record labels to agree - something that they refused to do all those years ago.

About Me

I have been a technology journalist and consultant for 30 years, covering
the Internet since March 1994, and the free software world since 1995.

One early feature I wrote was for Wired in 1997:
The Greatest OS that (N)ever Was.
My most recent books are Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, and Digital Code of Life: How Bioinformatics is Revolutionizing Science, Medicine and Business.